Over the years, Modi has made gaffes of all kinds. The visibility of these has become very little because of the skewed media focus since 2014. Recently, he referred to Gandhi as “Mohanlal” Gandhi. One can understand an occasional slip of tongue. But this was the third time that he has got the father of the nation’s name wrong, quite extraordinary for the prime minister of the country.

Modi has made blunders about historical and development facts: Chandragupta belonging to the Gupta Dynasty, confusing his own ideological progenitor and none less than the founder of Jan Sangh, Syama Prasad Mookerji, with somebody else, Alexander being defeated by Biharis, Taxila being in Bihar, Konark Temple being 2,000 years old, and short skirts existing at the time, China spending 20% of its GDP on education, confusing the sizes of Shanghai and Delhi, and so on. This is in addition to the regular erroneous assertions (possibly deliberate) about Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, etc.

How do we then assess the brilliance of Modi vis-à-vis Rahul, especially, when we also do not have any chance to ask him any unscripted question? Surely, it must be a world record that a leader of a democratic nation has not addressed a single solo press conference in four years of rule. How do we assess the brilliance of a mind when all that we get are scripted eulogies like the London Town Hall session where there were paeans sung to Modi’s energy, asceticism and dedication to the nation, and had the interviewer himself clapping?

In contrast, we have the Rahul interaction sessions where there are unscripted, even fallacious and aggressive questions personally targeting him and his family, which then becomes the next-day headline of the establishment “media” as “In Singapore, Rahul Gandhi gets humiliated in front of a huge crowd!!!”